Why doesn't geekdom get the girls?

In My Humble Opinion
81

Brainglutton, why don’t you go ask the boys who are rioting about the upcoming female Ghostbusters movie why they think women don’t go for geeks? I’m sure you’ll get many enlightening answers.

I liked Paul Feig’s recent article about it:

Here’s Kristen Wiig - don’t miss the comments!

Or hey - DOTA2 is officially a Great Big Important Video Game (and most importantly, Cash Cow). The latest bit tournament happens in a few days, The Frankfurt Major. Why don’t you go ask the twenty men on their reporting staff why they didn’t include any women?
http://www.thefrankfurtmajor.com/news/revealing-the-stellar-frankfurt-major-broadcast-team/
Or, hey, here’s a thing. Did you hear that Zoe Quinn’s memoir, Crash Override, has been optioned by AMy Pascal, for her production company, Pascal Pictures, and Scarlett Johnason is among the actresses expressing some interest in playing Zoe. Why don’t you go ask the men flipping their shit about this why they think that geeks don’t get the girls?

Really. It’s disingenuous to pretend like there isn’t a whole, weaponized, streak of misogyny running right through geek culture. Not after the last year. Not after the fact that a major conservative news outlet is promoting anti-feminism ahead of Hilary Clinton’s election. Not while women are being driven from their homes and jobs by threats of rape and death.

Yes, yes. #notallmen. #notallgeeks. God forbid we don’t all rush in to soothe the poor, sad, feelings of the poor, sad, geekboys. But enough men and enough geeks are promoting misogynistic - literally, terroristic - behavior that the onus is on you guys to make it clear if you don’t want to be associated with them.

Pretending all of that isn’t happening, and then wondering if maybe women are just psychologically weird and different, like George Orwell said eighty years ago … I’m having a hard time being charitable, here, BrainGlutton.

82

Yup. I’m happy to be a geek, but it’s part of my job as a geek both to make it a welcoming hobby for the girls and women in my life, and to make it unwelcoming for asshole sexist dudes in my life. I don’t always do the best at it, but I gotta at least try.

83

applauds

84

No, it’s just looking at reality instead of the fantasy world that “nice guys” desperately want to believe in. Believing that ordinary people with ordinary relationship stresses are huge superjerks, lusting after women they believe are incredibly and repeatedly stupid, and faking friendship to get in someone’s pants are what was described in the quote.

Here’s an article that talks about nice guys: Nice Guy syndrome | Geek Feminism Wiki | Fandom and here’s some examples of how they act in the field: 21 Things That Prove Nice Guys Are The Absolute Worst

If the nice guy is actually her friend, he would be happy as her friend, instead of resentful that his veneer of niceness and gestures of friendship have not unlocked her vagina. For the rest, I hope you get help with your issues someday.

85

I didn’t mention any issues, I’ve chosen to accept a solitary life.

86

Actually, let me rephrase that.

They’re not really issues. I’ve chosen to accept a solitary life, but our culture constantly reminds us that we are expected to be partnered up to be happy. I resent this presumptuous assertion.

87

According to what you posted, the solitary life that you ‘chose’ depresses you, and you didn’t seem to choose it so much as have it forced upon you. If you are actually happy with a solitary life then good for you, but you chose to bring said decision into the discussion and you presented it in a very negative light, saying that it’s based on things that depress you if they even cross your mind. That qualifies as having issues by my standards, but whether you get help, wallow in your solitude, or just phrased things wrong and are actually happy with the life you’ve chosen doesn’t really make much difference.

88

What depresses me is our culture reminding me I’m not supposed to be alone.

89

I do get that, that men like you are out there, LHoD. And I do appreciate it, deeply. You give me hope, and I apologize for making it sound like I don’t appreciate you. I’m just so freaking angry.

90

I can’t speak for socially clueless guys as a group, and as I’ve hinted I’m out of the dating game for good and all, but I have personally known: -

  • a girl besotted with a guy whose idea of banter was to tell everyone within earshot that she was on her period while she was begging him to shut up about it
  • a woman who left one violent shitbag to take up with another violent shitbag whom even the neighbours on a rough council estate considered a violent shitbag
  • two or more girls who’ve managed to pick men who did a great line in wasting their money.

I also don’t claim to have been “hopelessly in love” with any of 'em, but a man would be only human to ask himself “Why in Kdapt’s[sup]*[/sup] name am I so desperately unattractive compared to that”?

Nemmind. There’s always share-cropping and insurance swindles to pass the time.

[sup]* Vance is good, but he’s not the only game in town[/sup]

91

Can’t you think of any women you know who you wouldn’t sleep with under any circumstances? Because I can. Personality is nice and all, but there has to be *some *physical attraction.

92

Under any circumstances? For sure. But they would need to have been pretty durn revolting - I mean, my own standards were fairly undiscriminating - and when it comes down to it, I wouldn’t have honestly said I was all that hideous as a teenager or a young man; I don’t think I compared too horribly with, say, the men referred to in my previous post, even physically. Maybe many geeks never wash and dress like grunge never went out of fashion, but not all, and not me.

If I were free and an averagely-good-looking woman showed some interest in pursuing a relationship with me? I’d have to have actively disliked her to be positive it was never going to happen.

Not that I was attempting to make this all about me, I hope we all understand.

93

Thanks-but I don’t at all feel like you’re going after me, and in a way I’m doing it not so much out of Great Idealism as because I’ve got a couple of daughters that I hope to share my geeky interests with, and I sure as hell don’t want them growing up in a misogynist culture.

94

First, there’s the choice of women to pursue. In my experience with nerds of all stripes, what happens is that they fixate/obsess over women solely based on their looks. This includes how they dress/act, in that revealing/tight clothing and a “sexy” attitude figure in prominently to “hotness”.

So in practice, this means that these guys choose to fixate on women who aren’t really good dating or companion material, in that they’ve been chosen solely on looks and the desire to sleep with them, without applying any other criteria.

Then they’re desperately chagrined when these women, who have been “chosen” solely based on looks, happen to be knuckleheads themselves and date other knuckleheads. Or when the girl happens to like outdoorsy, country type guys and not guys with moon tans.

The nerds then internalize this like they’ve somehow desperately failed in attractiveness, because these women’s actions don’t line up with their mental model of the world, and to some degree externalize it and blame the women for not seeing how awesome they are.

In reality, to use an analogy, it’s like fishing for freshwater panfish with offshore saltwater lures. You’re never going to catch anything, because you’re fishing with the wrong bait in the wrong place. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the fish OR the bait.

The real challenge for most nerd men is twofold. First, get over your obsession with looks. There’s only a tiny percentage of “hot” people, male or female. The vast majority of people aren’t “hot”, and chances are, you don’t even come close. And from a penis-eye’s view, ugly, pretty, fat and thin are pretty much the same. Their big worry is teeth! :slight_smile:

Second, recognize that your best bet is to find someone who is either a nerd girl, or at least tolerant of nerdy stuff. Then you can actually use your nerdiness to your advantage- it’s entirely possible that sonic spork you just bought might actually be a plus, instead of a horrid talisman of geekiness.

95

Yes, and correlation is not causation. Sure, the Venn diagram of “geeks” and “guys who can’t get girls” may resemble an eclipse, but still!

96

Ah, so the woman you described earlier wasn’t anyone you’ve ever met either, she was an exaggerated composite of several different women (or “girls”) who at one time or another had different types of relationship problems.

Perhaps the hypothetical socially clueless guy who’s in love with this unflattering caricature will have better luck once he figures out that individual women are…individuals…and not part of some female hivemind.

97

There’s lots of crazy women and crazy men in the world. Anyone can find evidence to support any theory about relationships.

98

This is worth it’s own thread, but one big reason many men can’t attract women is because they think women think the same way men do. Women don’t.

99

So is she “the object of their desire” or is she “not very revolting, so is bangable by undiscriminating standards”? The first implies that she is a person of special interest, while the second is much closer to ‘any port in a storm’. These nice guy complaints start to fall apart as you zoom in on them - if you’re really open to just about any woman, then calling one woman who you happen to be kind of close to ‘the object of my desire’ isn’t really a reasonable thing to do.

And I wonder how far that ‘pretty durn revolting’ goes really when you look at any particular person’s standards. My experience with nice guys and the women who they fixate on is that they combine the worst aspects of ‘picky’ and ‘any port in a storm’. On the one hand they tend to want only conventionally attractive women who actually spend a lot of time on typically feminine stuff like body hair removal and makeup and has no medical or injury issues, but on the other hand any chick who fits in the zone will do, and they will project the characteristics they want on her rather than pay attention to who she really is. It’s a really unhealthy and unsustainable set of dating standards hidden behind a wall of dishonesty and lack of introspection.

100

Back when I played Friday Night Magic, we had two, maybe three, teenage girls and one grandmother out of 25ish people. There was also a regular stream of girls who would show up who were obviously the girlfriend of one of the players. Probably one every two weeks or so. They’d play the one night but you wouldn’t see them again.

Granted, I’m a guy so maybe I was missing out on some low level misogyny and I wasn’t exactly keeping tabs so, if some player spent the game staring at her boobs, I wouldn’t know. But I’d say everyone was generally pretty cool. That said, I assume it just really wasn’t their scene and they went the once to be polite or because they wanted to do what their guy was doing and once was enough.

They usually had the rules down fairly well though so they must have played a bit outside the FNM events. No one was staring at a Forest and asking what it does or why do people keep turning their cards sideways.